Attributions Flashcards
Heider’s theory of naive psychology
behaviors: motive driven > look for causal explanations
attempt to control and predict the environment > look for enduring properties (eg. personality, abilities)
personal / dispositional / internal vs environmental / situational / external
Jones and Davis’s theory of correspondent inference
the sources of information that people use to explain a person’s behavior as due to dispositional traits 1. freely chosen behavior 2. non-common effects 3. socially undesirable behavior 4. hedonic relevance 5. personalism
freely chosen behaviour
more indicative of disposition
non-common effects
Effects of behaviour that are relatively exclusive to that behaviour rather than other behaviours
> tells more about dispositions
socially undesirable behaviour
socially desirable behaviour:
> tells us little about the disposition
> because it is likely to be controlled by societal norms
socially undesirable behaviour:
> counter-normative
> better basis for making a correspondent inference
hedonic relevance
The
actor’s behavioural outcome affects the perceiver to some extent
(non-intentional)
personalism
The actor has an intention to harm or benefit the perceiver
Harold Kelley’s covariation model
COVARIATION between the behavior and the source tells us what source we can
attribute the behavior to:
1. actor / person – the actor or the source of the behavior
consensus: low
distinctiveness: low
consistency: high
- object / entity – the person or the object / entity the actor is reacting to
consensus: high
distinctiveness: high
consistency: high - situation / occasion – the time and place in which the behavior takes place
consensus: low
distinctiveness: high
consistency: low
the covariation principle
- consensus
others also do the same thing - distinctiveness
actor does NOT behave the same way towards other objects / entities - consistency
always the same way across time and place
causal inference from single observations (kelley)
Attributing to EITHER disposition of the person OR the demands of the situation is
sufficient to explain the behavior
Whether the environment inhibits or facilitates the behavior
AUGMENTATION principle
when behavior occurs despite situational constraints, we AUGMENT attributions to personal causes
DISCOUNTING principle
when behavior occurs in situations which facilitates engagement in such behavior, we DISCOUNT person attributions to that behavior
OVER-JUSTIFICATION
lose INTRINSIC MOTIVATION upon contingent rewarding
WEINER’S ATTRIBUTION THEORY
Locus of control:
internal vs external
Stability
Controllability
ATTRIBUTIONS IN ACADEMIC SETTINGS
ability: stable + internal
effort: unstable + internal
task difficulty: stable + external
luck: unstable + external
Emotions: angry
attribution: internal and controllable
pity
external and uncontrollable
stigma
identifiable condition or feature that makes an individual subject to social rejection
eg obesity
uncontrollable stigma
may not lead to social rejection
Hopelessness
if attributing failure to (explanatory style) stable, global, & internal causes
self-serving bias
attribute success to internal causes
attribute failure to external or unstable or uncontrollable causes
Illusion of control
people assume that they have control but in fact they don’t
outcome > chance probability
suggestion of skill, e.g,. competition, choice into chance event will lead to illusion of control
Depressive realism
depressed people are more realistic (accurate) in estimating chance event with “skill” cues
non-depressed people usually overestimate degree of control
Reward and Punishment
we will reward and punish others:
more if the causes are internal and controllable
less if the causes are external and uncontrollable
Fundamental attribution error
The general tendency to make personality inferences
Overestimate disposition factors as causes of behavior and underestimate situational determinants
reasons of fab
Focus of attention
Actor behavior attracts more attention than background situational factors
Differential forgetting
Situational causes are forgotten more easily than dispositional causes
produce a dispositional shift over time
Cultural and development factors
Western independent self vs. non-western interdependent self
(which differentiates fundamental attribution bias vs correspondence bias)
learn to attribute dispositionally in late childhood in Western vs attributing more situationally in Hindu Indian
Linguistic factors
Easier to describe actor and action in same terms but not situations e.g., greedy person but not greedy situation
Actor-observer bias
The actor (agent of the behavior) is prone to making situation attributions while the observer is prone to making person / disposition attributions
False consensus effect
The tendency for individuals to overestimate the proportion of people in the population who would think or act the same way they themselves do
Ethnocentrism
belief that one’s own group is better than other groups and use our own group as a standard
Ultimate fundamental attribution error
in-group members’ …
desirable behaviors to internal, stable factors, and undesirable behaviors to external, unstable factors
out-group members’ …
desirable behaviors to external, unstable factors, and
undesirable behaviors to internal, stable factors
